European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Zen-On Releases Six New Publications by Akutagawa, Fukushi, Kato, and Niimi

Jan. 31, 2025

Zen-On released six new publications this month, including two by Yasushi Akutagawa (1925-1989) in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Akutagawa's Prima Sinfonia (1954) was premiered on January 1, 1954 by the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, under the composer's baton. Zen-On has published the orchestral and miniature scores of this work. Akutagawa's String Quartet (1948) was also released this month. The work was first broadcast by NHK on February 5, 1948.

Norio Fukushi's Mizudori (2016) for singing koto player was commissioned by Ayumi Shimonoto and premiered by the commissioner on February 28, 2016. The composer notes:

"This poem by Bochō Yamamura (1884-1924) with its simple phonetic orthography abounds with an almost scary sense of tranquility. At the same time its physical sound within this atmosphere of tranquillity has a tenacious quality that seems to pierce through with a directness that transcends mere physical vibration. The background to this song with its instrumental accompaniment is the empathetic relationship between stasis and kinesis, even if this amounts to no more than an auditory illusion.

The main musical material consists of three chords that represent aquatic birds with semitones coming into contact like noise with the most consonant harmonies. Chords appear in varying combinations in response to the birds as they change their positions on the surface of the lake. This is closely related to the distance from the object in the field of vision of Bochō Yamamura.

Through the medium of the vibrant, luxuriant voice of Ayumi Shimonoto, something that was originally no more than a point of departure in the form of a simple sound weaves its way between sounds consisting of consonances and dissonances to create a world of rich lyricism, providing a light that I hope will illuminate the future of this work."

Masanori Kato'sLantern Under the Waves (2019) for euphonium and piano was commissioned by Sunport Hall Takamatsu and premiered there on January 25, 2020 by Ayaka Sato with the composer at the piano. Kato notes:

"When Ayaka Sato was on her way back home from a lesson she noticed a faint light beneath the eaves of a house, an image which seemed in her mind to evoke the sound of a euphonium being played. This was the image that served as the starting point for this piece.

The image conjured up in my own mind of this house with its lantern is that of an old but sturdy traditional Japanese house with a touch here and there of Western design features and inhabited by a family with a long history.

In my imagination, the house and its grounds have been handed down from generation to generation, encountering natural disasters, strife and historical events. People from all walks of life will have passed in front of its imposing gate.

The lantern hanging in the gateway will have borne witness over many years to the comings and goings and the conversations of the house’s residents and passers-by, as well as being an indirect spectator of the births and deaths of those in the house.

As I ruminated on this image, I began to feel that what I wanted to do in this piece was to depict not so much the faint, warm light emanating from the lamp as the mood of an age of disquiet and the anxiety and mystery felt by the lamp in the faint light of dusk. This led me to structure the piece in two movements, the first entitled "Memories" and the second "Warmth", alluding to the leisure hours of the family living in the house where the lantern shines.

While making the most of the exceptional functional and expressive features of the euphonium, I hope that performers and listeners will use this music as a vehicle for creating their own stories based on the Lantern Under the Eaves.

Finally, Tokuhide Niimi's The Waste Land I-II-III (2023) for piano and percussion was commissioned by Zen-On Music Co., Ltd. and premiered on December 21, 2023 at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Recital Hall as part of Zen-On's annual "Groupe des Quatre et ses ami(e)s" concert. Niimi notes:

"I delved into T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land for the first time last spring (2022) and was struck above all by its narrative stylishness and sense of speed. At the end of last year, I had the idea of creating a work employing the concept of musical ekphrasis, whereby a painting or poem is portrayed through the medium of music. The Waste Land is a difficult poem to understand, and it was the translation and commentary in Japanese by Sōji Iwasaki that enabled me to understand its meaning and background.

Needless to say, my music is in no sense a ‘translation’ of the poem into music. It sometimes accompanies the poem, while at other times it strays and escapes from it.

It was an unexpectedly thrilling experience for me to compose a work that conjured up in my imagination the dualisms of death and rebirth, the sacred and the profane, abundance and decay, order and chaos, sanity and madness, war and peace, love and lust, civilization and its denouement, and the varied gradations in between. T.S. Eliot’s poem consists of five sections. My work is an ekphrasis on the poem up to and including the third section, "The Fire Sermon."  I am planning in the near future to compose an ekphrasis for the fourth and fifth sections of the poem."


World premiere performance of Tokuhide Niimi's The Waste Land for Piano and Percussion/
Toshio Nakagawa, piano; Shiniti Uéno, percussion

To learn more about Yasushi Akutagawa, Norio Fukushi, Masanori Kato, and Tokuhide Niimi, visit: zen-on.co.jp.

News